There’s been a mixing pot of Sonic news lately, none of which has been deserving of a full-blown article, which is why Sonic News has rounded them up into handy little news reports.
SEGA’s FPS a phantom of it’s former self?
In Japan there have been rumours suggesting that, due impart to an absences from E3, Fifth Phantom Saga (developed by Sonic Team) for the PS3 had been canned. HarihariSonic of Japanese Sonic fan site Act Select quelled these rumours by revealing SEGA were still listing the game down on its products page of their Japanese site.
For anybody interested in Fifth Phantom Saga you can visit the official Japanese site here: Fifth Phantom Saga
Sonic Wild Fire E3 demonstration
Gamespot has a video of the Sonic Wild Fire demonstration members of the press were show during E3 available to download for registered members here.
If you’re not a registered member then you can read the following Sonic News transcript:
The cooler games we’re seeing for the Wii is actually a Sonic title. And for those of us old enough to remember when SEGA was in the hardware business it’s still a little weird, err but it really is cool to see Sonic back after all these years, and this adventure is especially exciting for us because it is err the first Sonic adventure in a really long time where it’s just Sonic, from the looks of it.
Erm, it’s called Sonic Wild Fire, and it uses the controller in some pretty unique ways. Erm, you actually hold it like this *holds controller lengthways* Err, which I guess for those of you who have been checking out the BLANK coverage is like the shofer mode of the control bars, err and basically as you can see the, the lamp on the screen kinda reacts to it. Err, and there’s a very particular reason as to why there’s a lamp on the screen, err Sonic Wild Fire is about Sonic trying to get the pages back of the Arabian Nights story, err a, we haven’t figured out why, but that’s what he’s got to do, so fine.
Right so the first thing you do is shake the controller, and boom here we are, *tutorial appears with Sonic model on the Arabian Nights book* there’s a quick explanation on how to control it for a bunch of you guys that are wondering what the heck to do. So you tilt the controller left or right to move him that way, *turns page* and then the 2 button err is your jump. A quick tap gets you up high, *page turns* hold it down and you do a bigger jump, and if you want to move backwards you tilt it back *page turns*. And then you have that thing called the Wild Gauge, you’re collecting orbs while you play which I’ll show you in a second. When it’s full, err you just go like this *shakes controller up and down*. And you engaged it *shakes controller once* like right now. *page turns and game begins*
*Press mumbling* OK, sure. Erm so here we are in the level, err and basically it’s kinda a rail thing, you just have to steer. Err and it’s a little dark right now cos he’s starting in like this temple thing, and then here we are *exits temple*. Erm obviously the better you are at it, which I’m kinda OK, the faster you’ll speed you’ll pick up. These are the orbs which you collect, err and they’re filling up the Wild Gauge which you’ll see over there on the right. And there you go. It’s a little crazy because it’s; it’s at a weird angle which kinda like drops you right in the middle of the game and gives you a good sense of speed. And then there’s, err a speed bumper. And you have to avoid all this stuff which is coming up in your way. Erm, you know one of the coolest things is the sense of speed because it’s been such a long since we’ve had a Sonic game that you know didn’t have that 3D stuff, and where you had to worry about, err where you had to worry about, you know, camera angels and whatnot.
The fixed camera angel actually suites Sonic pretty well, as because, well, geese, all you really care about in a Sonic game in some ways is going really, really fast, and we can make that happen right now *activates Wild Gauge*. It’s a little crazy, but it’s got that cool, almost out of control feeling that you have with a Sonic game. Err, which you know, we’ve kinda always wanted in a lot of ways.